The Pirate Bay To Sue Anti-Piracy Group For Copyright Infringement

Finnish anti-piracy group steals the design of The Pirate Bay website, forcing The Pirate Bay to possibly take legal action in a complete role reversal

The Pirate Bay is planning to give a Finnish anti-piracy group a taste of their own medicine by suing them for copyright infringement.

The ironic threat comes after the Helsinki based anti-piracy group, Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC), launched a spoof website that copies, down the CSS files used, the design of The Pirate Bay. Instead of the iconic pirate ship logo, the spoof site uses a similarly stylized pirate ship that appears to be sinking.

People who stumble onto this "fake" Pirate Bay and then uses the search function will be presented with a message redirecting them to legal content.

More than a mere imitation of the real Pirate Bay website, further examination of design assets used by the website, including the CSS file, reveals that it was much more of a copy and paste job, than a re-imagining. In fact, the CSS file for the fake site still has the phrase "main style sheet for thepiratebay.se" embedded into the comments.

"We are outraged by this behavior," the spokesperson told TorrentFreak. "People must understand what is right and wrong. Stealing material like this on the Internet is a threat to economies worldwide. We feel that we must make a statement and therefore we will sue them for copyright infringement."

While The Pirate Bay promotes copy-free, the site's usage policies clearly indicate how the content on the site can be used. While personal usage always remains free, organizations, such as the CIAPC, must first seek permission from The Pirate Bay before using any content, or face a minimum charge of EUR 5,000 for the violation, according to the site's policies.

While it's not clear if The Pirate Bay's legal threats are actually genuine, the spokesperson did indicate an alternative, to abandon the concept of copyright altogether. "If not even IFPI and their friends can respect copyright, perhaps it’s time to move on?"